Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 7, 2015; 21(13): 3843-3849
Published online Apr 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i13.3843
Hepatic artery infusion chemotherapy for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma
Myeong Jun Song
Myeong Jun Song, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Daejeon St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, the Catholic University of Korea, Daejeon 301-723, South Korea
Author contributions: Song MJ solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest: There is no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Myeong Jun Song, MD, PhD, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Daejeon St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, the Catholic University of Korea, Daeheung-ro 64, Jung-gu, Daejeon 301-723, South Korea. mjsong95@gmail.com
Telephone: +82-42-2209291
Received: November 24, 2014
Peer-review started: November 25, 2014
First decision: December 26, 2014
Revised: January 2, 2015
Accepted: February 5, 2015
Article in press: February 5, 2015
Published online: April 7, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Sorafenib is the standard of treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the suitability of sorafenib is limited by its low response rates, and unsuitability for patients with poor liver function. Therefore, other treatment modalities are required. Hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC) has the advantages of delivering high levels of chemotherapeutic drugs directly into tumor-associated hepatic arterial branches and repeat injections are relatively simple to carry out. Thus the local therapeutic level is increased and systemic adverse effects are decreased. In the future, HAIC may be a promising treatment strategy for the management of advanced HCC.